1. Field of the Invention
A pliers-type insulation stripping tool includes a pair of blade holders that are removably connected with the pull rod that longitudinally displaces the blades relative to the handle shell when a severed length of insulation is stripped from the insulated conductor. A resilient ejector arrangement in provided for ejecting from the handle shell the length of stripped insulation. In order to permit use of the insulation stripping tool with insulated conductors of various sizes and diameters, a blade depth adjusting device is provided for adjusting the distance between at least one of the blade holders and the associated clamping jaw.
2. Description of Related Art
Insulation stripping tools for severing and removing a severed layer of insulation from an insulated conductor are well known in the patented prior art, as evidenced by the German patent No. DE 195 12 132 C1 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,870). The design shown and described there has worked very well in practice. The stripping pliers is configured so that a pull rod can move in the lengthwise direction of the pliers mouth and two stripping elements are fastened to the pull rod in order to move along with it and thereby pull the layer of insulation off from a cable. The drawback to this stripping pliers is that one must use a different pliers with stripping blades of different dimension for different layer thicknesses of cable or insulation in order to avoid cutting through the cable to an excessive depth, or in the opposite situation if the depth of cutting is too little then the insulation cannot be stripped from the cable.
The German patent No. DE 20 2004 014 801 U1 solves this problem at least partly in that a spring action of the stripping knife is used for slightly varying layer thicknesses of insulation. But this solution offers no remedy when the thicknesses of insulation layers are greatly different.
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,910,401 to Tapper discloses a stripping pliers tool with a cutting unit that contains two pivot-mounted arms spring-loaded against each other and having cutting elements at their two ends, while the cutting unit is accommodated between clamping claws and moves along with them. Connected to this cutting unit is a pull rod and a clamping and pulling mechanism. The connection between the pivot-mounted arms is a tubular rotary bearing. Hence, the two arms can swivel relative to each other, yet still be firmly joined together as a unit. This rotary bearing contains a needle, which joins the cutting unit to the pull rod. The drawback to this design is that the cutting unit can only be removed as a whole from the pliers and the removal of the cutting unit is time consuming, since one must also remove the needle from the rotary bearing. Furthermore, the needle has proven to be not very suited as a means of fastening the cutting unit to the pull rod.
Accordingly, the present invention was developed to provide an insulation-stripping pliers-type tool that is suitable for the stripping of cables and conductors with the most diverse thicknesses of insulation layers.